Hi my friend,

If your dad is on Aricept, it is a pretty safe bet that the doctor feels
there is a good reason for it.   I wonder if he has been tested for
everything?    There are lots of things that cause memory and cognitive
problems and not all of them are alzheimers.   Your mother may not have
mentioned whether he had testing done three years ago when he first showed
signs.    It would be good if you could talk to his doctor yourself and find
out exactly what was tested etc.

There is no strict timetable for how long your dad has left.   It could be
within a three year period, but there are those who can stay alive for many
years with the illness.    In my mother in laws case, she was showing
symptoms in 1999 and she died in 2005 of pancreatic cancer..... so she
didn't die of alzheimers.   However the last year of her life she was in a
nursing home due to her growing more and more incapacitated.   From her
diagnosis in the year 2000 till she died, she slowly became more and more
confused, and ultimately unable to walk by herself even for a few feet
without falling down.  Ultimately we couldn't cope with her incontinence and
incapacity ourselves and reluctantly we had to place her in a nearby nursing
home where she got excellent care until the end.

She started out just a bit confused and forgetful and very depressed, which
spurred us to take her for full testing and diagnosis.   It only got worse
and worse over time, not better.   The life expectancy timetable is
different for everyone it seems.   I have been posting here and reading here
for many years now, and everyones loved one seems to have a different
schedule.    The gentleman who just posted that his wife passed away, came
here around the same time I did, and his wife was pretty much suffering from
the same level of impairment as my mother in law at that time.   His wife
just passed, and she did pass from the illness itself, not from another
disease.   So in her case it took about 7 yrs.    We have heard of shorter
and longer times from others.

The most important thing you need to know now, is whether or not your father
went to an elder law specialist attorney when he first got alzheimers, and
if your mother or yourself is his health care proxy, and whether they took
any steps to preserve his estate, and if he has all the appropriate
paperwork in place, will, DNR, living will, etc.

You need to know what will happen when your mom can't handle his illness at
home anymore..... and I assure you that day WILL come.   We were two people,
not one, and we reached that point after about 4 years.   She had terrible
delusions, and grew more and more incontinent and unable to hold herself up.
It was a very difficult time and our only regret is that we didn't place her
in that nursing home a lot sooner.   We nearly killed ourselves trying to
care for her at home to the end, and we aren't the only ones who did that.
Others here have done the same.    It would have been better to let someone
else do the harder caretaking work and visited her when we were at our
well-rested best.

At any rate, this is a great newsgroup.   Feel free to ask questions.  Lots
of good people here.   Oh.... and don't listen to the wackos.   We do have a
few trollish types as do all the usenet groups.

Buy a copy of the 36 Hour Day and read it cover to cover and you will then
have the tools to ask the right questions and to get an idea of what staging
your father might be at. He may not have AD but one of the numerous other
dementias. If he is taking Aricept, chances are he is early on in the
disease but if he has been taking it for three years then who knows, since
some people progress rapidly and some do not.

http://www.amazon.com/36-Hour-Day-Alzheimer-Dementing-Illnesses/dp/0446610410Your mother's denial is typical but will just make things more difficult inthe long run.  Discuss things privately with your father since your mothermight take a group discussion of his illness as a challenge. Just hope theyboth do not have it. My parents both have (or had) dementia to varyingdegrees.Welcome to the group no one wants to join.   AWbtw- Did anyone else notice in the new movie Away From Her (where JulieChristie plays a woman with AD) that her husband is reading a copy of The 36Hour Day during the movie?  This movie is highly recommended if you have notalready seen it.

Beginner Questions  

Group: alt.support.alzheimers Date: Thu, Dec 13, 2007, 6:43am From:
garagecapital@gmail.com (garagecapital)
I recently learned that my father is on Aricept; he is 79 and been
having increasing problem with memory, mood and confusion. My mother
dismissed it as old age dementia. But I believe she is just in denial or
stigmatizes Alzheimer's. I think with the prescription we are pretty
much past that. But when I see my father do I openly discuss Alzheimers
or is this a family/communication issue that really isn't for this
topic. If he has been having these symptons for about three years what
is the likely timetable and prognosis. Be blunt.
======================================

Old age doesn't cause dementia. Disease does. Old folks still have sharp
minds into the nineties or more.

Since there's no serious research on Alzheimers, and the late Dr. James
R. Hunt's great work on facial/cranial diseases in the early 1900s has
been covered up, the most you'll likely get from your father's doctor is
guesswork.  Searching for a physician who is knowledgeable on dementing
diseases is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Since your father's confusion is increasing, the disease is either
progressing, or the medicine is making him worse. Some medications cause
confusion and hallucinations.  Everyone's different, what affects one
may not affect another.  Some go slow ---others fast. The will to live
is a factor.

Oh, don't mind the trollish types. Its the newsgroup's mind controllers,
and their agenda, that should be the concern.

You wrote, "Be blunt!"

EddyJean

P.S. Dr. James R. Hunt, the father of Neurooogy in the United States,
must be turning in his grave

Hello garagecapital;
Perhaps you must see on the following studies. Do you know that more
than 50% of persons diagnosed as alzheimer they aren´t, are false
positive or false alzheimer? This is an extraordinary question indeed.
PSYCHO-SOCIAL ALTERNATIVE THEORY ON THE SO CALLS ALZHEIMER
ALZHEIMER´S  PROJECT ARGENTINA, September 2007

         Chronic Progressive Dementization, (CPD), the scientific
name that would correspond to which vulgarly calls Alzheimer, is a
quite different question from depression, the different types of
psychosis and obviously also from surprising and novel conducts that
appear sometimes with the normal aging. But in the long run much more
serious, since it leads to death, if it doesn't stop on time. He is so
extremely specific as low frequent, and has been over dimensioned in
extreme proportions by ignorance of normal aging behaviors, with which
it is confused many times, or simply to make a great business with
it.

         Although the final step of brain disintegration is quite
similar, there are two types of processes: the one that occurs in
young or greater adults and another different one that it happens in
very greater adults, so to so of around 80 years old or more. In these
the problem is "simply" the loss of the vital motivation, the desire´s
exhaustion to continue living. Abandonment of dreams, as Miguel de
Unamuno would say (1904) on the cession that Don Quixote in favor to
Sancho did at the end of the history, for soon, obviously, dying.
It's hardly ethical to catalogue these cases like patients, to
dominate them and to impoverish them with useless medicines.

Risk's people for a DCP are those that generally have a introverted
personality, had poor social relations, with tendency to isolation,
difficulties to face the challenges of the life, tendency to depend on
others, have constructed their personal identity under the shade or on
shoulders of another one (the woman of the engineer, the husband of
the owner, etc.), with cope deficit   with normal life's difficulties,
tendency to be self-absorbed on proper or another's painful events,
which is and designates in general like depression.

IN NO WAY IT TOUCHES TO ANYONE. There is nothing of chance, neither
suddenly nor magician in it. Neither familiar, nor infection, nor
contamination, nor any physical indeed. Only an alone human in a blind
alley.

With aging the probability that these people to suffer a painful loss
increases, obviously, like everyone. Risk increases in them enormously
without having capacity of facing of their painful and innermost
losses, that can be of the husband who gave or lent their identity, of
a children who gave their life's meaning, of their activities that
justified their existence, of their corporal or mental capacity to
which he had bet or concentrated. And when not counting on a familiar
network or a social network to stop their fall after a non elaborate
duel or to find an exit for it, the person collapses. It is the
beginning of the aim. The duel impossible to solve drags to its own
identity. It can have 40 years o. (the case younger than we have had
was a girl of 38 years o.), or 80.

It doesn't any relation with aging (except in sanitary data), but only
that when they advance the years is more probable that we suffer
painful losses. Until this moment and much later its brain is like a
quite normal ones, it does not show absolutely anything abnormal and
it's totally useless to want to see something in images, including
with the more sophisticated  technology, and less even in
electroencephalograms, that is something so coarse and inadequate as
to try to observe a virus with our old  magnifying glass of the
school. The culture of the image, the sickly fascination by the image
that comes from the TV consumption, has displaced to the logic, the
common sense and the semeiology. But perhaps it is only part of
another great business, since if possibly there were something in the
brain, simply we would not know what to face with this information.
And when indeed there is it, well at the end of the process, it has
left everything exposed so the simple observation that returns to be
useless.

The landslide of the person, its "delivery" as much in the dictionary
of the Real Spanish Academy (already in the first edition, 1713) like
in the original dictionaries of all the languages, is expressed in the
idea to wish to die, in the fixation of the attention in its own one
and wished death. There the abnormal, unnatural and destructive thing
begins because in fact we are programmed biologically, ancestrally,
for all the opposite, as it is to explore, to fight, to defend to us,
to hunt (in symbolic and generic sense), to attack, to ask to us, to
inquire to us, and our attention concentrated in each objective part
of a basic alert status that we never lose, except for when we slept
well, to recover of the permanent state of alert. We are not
programmed to give to us tamely, as it is not it no animal. And rather
that we are animals, no matter how hard the present cultures have
blurred it.

In addition in the beginning, that can be weeks or months, the person
enters and leaves the process. One resists to give itself and she even
can attack, and she does not do it against the people although it
seems, but against their reality, in which they does not find any
place.

How takes place then the cerebral damage that leads to the death?

         So that it is understood we must refresh some very basic
things, although surprising little well-known and spread. In the first
place that we have nine senses: vision, hearing, balance, tact,
spatial perception, taste, smell, sense of strange it (or familiarity)
and of the body perception. All these senses, and perhaps others more,
are active from the basic alert status and have two components: an
automatic one of immediate reaction (a light falls in love and
blinking, I smell of ammoniac, that it is used in home cleaners and I
am myself forced to separate away), and another one of recognition or
identification, in which the stimuli are sent to the brain and there
it is collated if that information has been loaded. They are the
sensorial recognitions.

Then, EVERYTHING WHAT WE DO, EVERYTHING WHAT WE THOUGHT, BY MORE BANAL
OR INSIGNIFICANT THAN IS, IS RECORDED IN THE BRAIN IN FORM OF A
NEURONAL NETWORK IN WHICH INEXORABLY PARTICIPATE NEURONS OF THE
SENSORIAL RECOGNITION SYSTEMS OF THE NINE SENSE CHANNELS: they are
those that incorporate the key information that avoid us to act. And
those networks that are armed in our brain also reinforce when we
return to make the same act or generated the same thought, but in
addition... because IN FACT ALL IS YET CONCECTED IN THE BRAIN WITH
ALL; WHICH WE ARE GOING TO DO WILL BE CONNECTED  WITH WHICH ALREADY WE
HAVE DONE AND LOADED LIKE NEURONAL NETWORKS IN OUR BRAIN.

         Some of those connections have a great importance in
activities of dairy life, and others very remotely: although the door
seems to us very heavy, already we know that the force is not to much
that we must make to open it. That attraction by rates which they are
multiple or submultiple of the heart rate (that that we listened for
the first time from the uterus of our mother), would be related indeed
with those. That is to say, to live means to be stimulating everything
somehow what we have done, lived and thought. For that reason it is
that when after a great activity of many years we happened to a
sedentary situation, under lower stimuli, then letting connect to many
areas of our neural brain networks, we began with the forgetfulnesses
that as much fear they give us now, that has invented the Alzheimer
like sword of Damocles to force to us to run to the pharmacies. Which
will understand that it is useless, at least for the consumer.

         However, when to fix attention to death, that is something
abstract that does not generate necessity to us of motor or cognitive
answer, and RESORTING TO THE NATURAL MECHANISM and AVAILABLE IN ALL to
block the reception of other stimuli like when we concentrated the
attention in something, these people happen to block, in the beginning
in oscillating form, with variations throughout a day or of days,
weeks or months, the sensorial stimuli of the different channels. It
is basic a biological mechanism since we must be concentrated in the
tiger that attacks to us and we cannot disperse with the colored birds
that more back jig about: it is a survival principle. Who know more of
the utility of this principle are the pickpockets of the
agglomerations: one of them produces a smaller but clear aggression on
the victim; this one is put in guard and concentrates its attention on
the aggressor, while his companion removes the wallet or cuts the
portfolio's strap, because we have blocked the tact and the body
perception when putting to us in guard in front of the aggressor and
concentrating the attention in him.

         The displacement of the attention towards different
objectives is normal and routine, but in the people who enter process
DCP blocking persistently the reception of stimuli by the different
sensorial channels and their consequent shipment the brain, it does
that the neurons of the systems of sensorial recognition that comprise
of the sensorial networks let  to receive stimuli, with which in the
long run lose the sinapsis connections, the connections between
neuronal networks do not travel stimuli by the dendrites and the
networks are disarmed. Something equivalent to the atrophy of a muscle
that we did not use.

         One frequent and a more common form of this process of a
very hard fix attention fixing on  something, but that is not to wish
to die, it's happens in the normal aging, when the concentration in a
painful fact (the death of a sister or brother, the divorce of a
daughter, the disease of a grandson, etc.) it disperses to us, but we
continued doing mechanical activities very known, like driving, to
prick onions or to drive the key of the gas. And here it is another
habitual source of that forgetfulness that confuse to all those
related with the Alzheimer, that happens through the same.

As now we know that in fact we have at least nine sensorial channels,
we can     understand why the people with dementia don't recognize
relatives, lose the sense of smell, the taste, the spatial
orientation, reel or they fall, etc. They are that part of the
cerebral functions that are losing when blocking the stimuli to have
fixed obstinately the attention to the death desire. No longer they
recognize, no longer have capacity of recovery of recent smaller
events (weak neuronal networks, with low sensorial stimulation, easy
to inactivate when they do not receive stimuli), and however still can
recover events of the past. But anyone, but... only THOSE IN WHICH THE
LIVED EVENTS (SENSORIAL NETWORKS ARMED IN THE PAST) WERE POSSIBLE WITH
A GREAT STIMULATION (EMOTIONAL), PROTROCTADELY REINFORCED and
CONNECTED WITH MULTIPLE OTHER SENSORIAL NETWORKS, LIKE THE DOOR OF
STREET OF OUR CHILDHOOD´S HOME, by where we did not shelter, by where
we shook to get dirty, by where we entered to eat, to find with the
arms of our mothers or the severe but protective glance of our
parents, etc. Then obviously the process of dissolution of the
neuronal networks becomes difficult when it arrives at those emotional
networks of the past, our true mental jewels. Thus he is then which
the biological indicators more solids to detect the one that a person
is in a dementia of this type are the faults of the systems of
sensorial recognition. The PROGRESSIVE DISINTEGRATION OF The NEURONAL
NETWORKS IN OUR BRAIN BY DEFICIT OF STIMULATION OF The SENSORIAL
SYSTEMS OF RECOGNITION IS THE ESSENCE OF THE PROCESS OF THIS DEMENTIA,
AND LEADS TO  DEATH BECAUSE AN ESSENTIAL AUTOMATIC SYSTEM HAS
CONNECTIONS WITH SENSORIAL NETWORKS YOU SPECIFY, THAT WHEN ALSO THEY
GET TO BE AFFECTED, CAUSES OBVIOUSLY THE DEATH. Why is not wanted it
to recognize, if it is so obvious? Perhaps because it would leave
perhaps the majority of the supposed cases outside.

         But the person is not conscious of the great damage there
are caused to their self. Also their relatives and the majority of
their doctors doesn't  know the basic mechanism that produce the
phenomena. The person is in a psychological paralysis forehead to the
reality, she does not find the way to return to it, and they only
wishes to die. Then, an order word, with the firmness and the
affection of a father, could avoid the continuation of the process.
And this explains why we have been able to even recover people with
several years of medical diagnosis with this type of dementia.

         Then it isn't properly a disease ("joint of signs and
symptoms that responds to a well-known cause that is function of the
doctor to neutralize"), is not genetic, it does not have to do with
the aging (confusion comes from which to greater age, greater it's the
probability of suffering personal painful losses, that are a very
frequent trigger one, since we have already said), does not begin with
any damage in the brain but that concludes in the long run in it, it
isn't a problem of the memory but of the attention, and before this
one of the motivation, and before this one of the search of
satisfaction according to priorities, and before this one of the
biological and psychological pulsions controlled or not by the will,
and even before the basal state of alert that it perceives immediately
what it is necessary to him, which him lack.

        In short, that the memory is so depend on scenaries,
circumstances and factors in that the central protagonist we are, who
can think that in fact the memory are ourself. And although many along
the man history tried it for perverse intentions, we are not reduced
to a taxonomy simplification.
         To have centered and to have related this dementia to the
memory, and to have located in the thought of which this one is an
organization in himself, that have a physical or biologically
localization, we think that it has been the origin of the great
confusion that it has prevented until now understanding the
phenomenon. Confusion and error that is reflected in a near percentage
al 50 % of cases diagnosed and pharmacologically treated like
"Alzheimer" and that is merely normal aging, so as we have been able
to verify in Argentina, Spain, the Great Britain and United States.
Merely aging with disattention to be fixing the attention to painful
facts. Aging of women who are been in submission forced or allowed all
their life and who have decided to break the scheme ("seventy-agers",
or the rebellion of the 70), aging with forgetfulness to have passed
to a life not only sedentary but also with many less stimuli, aging
with affective, economic, social marginalization. Aging catalogued
like patient because no longer they want, is not interested (they
forget) to do what they always did: to mop plates, to clean the
floors, to take care of the eighth grandson, to fix the car. Aging
with ironies, sarcasms, fantasies and also aggressions as novel forms
in which it express the difficulty of the communication, of the
participation in the familiar or social life. A true alzheimerization
of the greater adults, and the society everything, to which it is
necessary to put a final point.

It remotely have the phenomenon nor the dimension that is said to have
and in addition, the changes that come promptly producing, in special
the freedom, independence and own construction of his own identity in
the women and also in men, it is raising a dock to him of important
containment, and who or we would do in betting to that change.

And finally, it isn't either irreversible, since it is possible and it
gives clear and forceful result, to elevate to those people the self-
esteem and the attention to him, and to permute the abstract idea of
death wished by the one of a real life that surrounds it, with a
alluvium of satisfactory stimuli that the person identifies like own,
the shade by the light that surrounds us to all to little that we lend
a little attention, taken care of and love, and inserting it soon in a
new extolled dairy life. It isn't easy, it is an abyss of difference
with giving a tablet, but he is tremendously positive as much for the
affected ones as for which we worked with the protocols derived from
the psycho social theory neuro sensorio desintegrative of progressive
the chronic dementia, that are under free  disposition to all.

         It is an open theory that we hoped to finish constructing
between all, between the relatives, the own ones affected, cargivers,
and the free, independent, critical, studious,  professionals and
scientists,
Prof.Lic.Luis María Sánchez,
Neurobiologist, University of Entre Rios, Full Professor,
Director,
Alzheimer Project Argentina
TE 0054 3442 431442   stopalz@gmail.com    www.stopalz.org

Sanchez LM. Effect of social isolation, coping deficit after personal
losses, apathy and perception blockade in patients with alzheimer´s
disease. Rev Esp Geriatr Gerontol 2004;39(6):371-80.
Sanchez LM. Progressive to acute social and psychosocial introversion
features and behaviors toward alzheimer´s process. The I J World
Health and Societal Politics 2005; 2(1).
Sanchez LM. Teoría de la articulación de factores psicosociales y
sensoriales deficientes en la desintegración cerebral en casos de
Alzheimer. Geriatrianet.com 2006;8(2).
Sanchez LM, Rubano MdelC, García JD, Cantero CR, Gárate LMT, Florentin
BR. Behavioral factors and sensorial identification deficits as
predictors for dementia of the alzheimer´s type. Rev Neurol.
2007;44(4):198-202.